Glen Rose advances to semis, regionals

April 30, 2011

Glen Rose beat Harmony Grove 10-3 Saturday in the second round of the 3A-5 District Tournament held in Mayflower.
With the win, the Beavers advance to the district semifinals and automatically earn a place in a 3A Regional Tournament, while the Cardinals’ season came to a close.
The No. 3 seed Beavers played Jessieville later Saturday in the semifinals. However, the results of the game were not available by press time.
With a loss to Jessieville, who beat Glen Rose twice in the regular season, including an 18-1 romp Thursday to close out 3A-5 Conference play, the Beavers will be a No. 3 seed at regionals — a win will land Glen Rose either a one or two seed depending on how other district tournaments play out.
After the win against Harmony Grove, Beavers head coach Chase Meyers said, “We’re looking for some redemption,” adding that beating Jessieville would be a “task.”
“We want to go out there and prove our seed. Right now the pressure’s off, and we can just go out and have fun.”
Freshman Wesley Ramsey started pitching for the Beavers, going two innings and allowing three runs, none of which were earned.
“We made three errors in the first two innings behind Wesley,” Meyers said.
After scoring one run in the first inning to take the lead, Glen Rose gave up three runs in the second off one hit, two walks and two errors, Meyers said.
The Cardinals would not score again, but the Beavers would go on to score one run in the third and fourth innings, two in the fifth and five in the sixth.
Meyers said Ramsey, who had one strikeout, “wasn’t doing badly, but they were hitting him, so I brought in Collin Hunter to start the third, and he finished the game.”
He said, “They still hit the ball, but we did much better after that.”
Hunter, a sophomore, went five innings, giving up no runs on one hit and two walks. He struck out six batters.
Both Ramsey and Hunter pitched Wednesday in the Beavers’ win against Little Rock Episcopal.
Meyers said Hunter “didn’t have his best game … he had a little fatigue, but he had enough to get the win.”
Offensively for the Beavers, all but one batter in the lineup reached base on a hit, Meyers said.
“We consistently hit the ball, but we left a lot of runners on base,” he said. “That had me a little bit worrisome — especially early in the game.
“We’d beaten Harmony Grove twice this year … but they’d been playing their best baseball later this year.”
Freshman Dakota Harris batted 3-4 while scoring two runs, and junior Brandon Kettell went 4-4 with two runs. Ramsey was 2-3 with two runs.
Sophomore Lane Ballard was 1-4, including a leadoff home run in the fourth inning.
“That got our juices flowing,” Meyers said. “After that, we turned the corner and played better baseball.”